SAMs everywhere: No Where (Air) To Fly

Three air crashes is the past one week. The most chilling one is the shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine with 298 on board. The other two crashes have attributed to weather related causes. If we recall there have several near collisions of aircrafts in air or on runaways. Air travel was touted as the safest. I am not sure what the basis of that claim was. The right way of comparison would be the ratios of fatalities to respective modes of travel like air, train, roads and waterways at some macro level.   

International commercial passenger air travel is increasing @ of 5.1% pa & its doubling every 15 years. In addition to this there is freight air traffic, plus military air force traffic. Add to this lower altitude traffic from helicopters, small private plans. Executive jets, etc. So skies are indeed quite crowded at all points of time.

Highest traffic is in the North American airports. About 2 mn passengers fly daily, one bn per annum and 60 million flights per annum. But over the next twenty years there will be a tectonic shift towards Asia Pacific where most of the incremental traffic will emanate with huge incremental GDPs, rising middle class and wealth.  Are we prepared for this explosion of air traffic. As it is, we are facing so many near misses through providential whiskers of cat. The infinite forces have been kind. Below I have quoted shares of global air traffic:

Based on 2013 figures, Asia/Pacific remains the world’s largest region, with a 32% share of total capacity representing an increase of +7.0% over 2012. Despite an improving economic climate in Europe and North America, the capacity of the European and North American airlines grew below the world

average, growing at +2.8% and +2.1%, respectively. The Middle East region remains the fastest growing in the world, expanding at +11.9% in 2013 and accounting for 9% of the world traffic. The capacity offered by the airlines of Latin America/ Caribbean and Africa represents respectively 5% and 3% of the world total, and expanded +4.6% and +4.9%, respectively.

All this is adding tremendously to the CO2 emissions which a aggravating global warming and climate change precipitously. The carbon footprints left by airlines are lethal.

Some of the other collateral risks in air travel are: proliferation of drones both military and commercial which sometimes come dangerously to the paths of the big metal birds.  Bird hits near airports are yet another unavoidably hazard of flying. With greater urban concentrations these poor birds have no option but to meet their doom by coming in the way of the big birds.

There has been a new urban phenomenon of aerotropolises coming up around new international airport. Just like 100s of years all great cities grew around port towns on rivers and seas.

Some of the other risks which flying entails are pilots who report to duty with higher than permissible alcohol and substances in their blood streams.  A notable movie “Flight” stirs up a lot of existential emotions. But the biggest risks in airline industry has been spawned post 9/11. Airport security checks have been heightened considerably. Cost of flying gone up considerably. As it is most airlines are flying at losses. There is a lot of mergers and amalgamations in the airline industry in order to keep afloat.

All is if we compare with our pastoral lives 500 years ago when people hardly ventured beyond twenty miles of their villages by foot mostly. Life was truly simply and less energy intensive. Then came trains, cars and finally planes. The world truly became our oyster. Globalisation truly has its dark underbelly and flipside. All this scientific progress comes  with a cost.

Now the new face of terror is truly diabolical. These rogue terror outfits equipped with these deadly SAMs are ably the reach for the skies and no one is safe. Any long international fight has to fly over so many not so friendly countries and also so many with conflict zones. It’s difficult to predict which of these rogue terror outfits does not have SAMs. We are truly at the mercy of international terrorists.  In addition there are military aircraft flying all the time, including stealth aircraft which are off the radars.

Hence the question arises how long flying will be safe with these proliferating SAMs like virtual landmines and the other big birds.

If I may touch upon a pet theme of mine: UFOs are also out there adding more complexity to an already complicated picture. The truth is truly out there.

Which leaves us with the existential question: to fly or not to fly. Are these signals for us to rewind our hi tech lives and gradually adopt pastoral lives. Back to the family where we belong. 

Motivated vs True Research

Recently there was an article in the papers on ketogenic diet, which espouses fats, animal proteins and  very low carbs. Several have followed it with immense beneficial results. At the same time there other schools of research who position themselves at the very antipodes of ketogenic diet. High fat diets have very few takers. In fact they are roundly held responsible for all modern heart problems which become endemic in most societies. The general perception is that high carb diets are good for sports. So we see that there are a lot of contradictions between the various types of diets for sports, well being, healthcare and various age groups. Hence research turns out to be myriad edged sword.

Hence we see that broadly there are two types of research: concept of true fundamental unbiased research vs biased industry funded agenda based research.

In my first job, which was in one of India’s largest banks, I was posted in the Research Department. Soon I was discontented with the age old research reports sent to the Board of the Bank. The reports served no commercial purpose. No great policy or strategy emerged from them. Hence I started a quest for True Research which pioneered and focused upon the strategic initiatives of the bank, its profitability across all segments, classes of branches and SBUs, costing of services, customer satisfaction.

Research has increased by leaps and bound over past thirty years or so. More often than not, research has been a hand maiden for the socio-political bent and structure of the industrial organization. Hence we often come across research outputs which are contradictory in substance, mostly to support the industry which has sponsored the research. Hence we come across diametrically opposite findings which for example will talk about the virtues of tomatoes, and then few months later the reverse findings will be published. This happens all the time with views of benefits of certain vegetables or meats, followed in no time by the research on the negative impact of the same vegetables or meats. Research is the new PR tool of industries. 

There a huge racket prevalent in terms medical trials all over the world. Here the pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors, regulatory authorities and health insurance companies all join hands in promoting clinical trials of drug on the unsuspecting public, often banning more effective drugs, in order gain monopoly for clinical trial medicines. The health care mafia is a strong one which in order to provide its drugs will go to any length to push its medicines.

Research in the financial system has also created weapons of mass destruction which led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Sophisticated instruments like packaged bonds sold to other banks. The traders and rocket scientists also added to the woes with trading in the black pools of the net apart from other rogue products.

The other ugly side of research is that it needs funding. So there a tenuous relationship between investors and those in charge of research. So the later bend backwards to support the view of their financiers.  Even the research of climate change which has snowballed out of all proportions has those who believe in climate change and the rival camps who are climate skeptics.

We have reached a stage where there is a cacophony and we are not able to believe in any particular research and sift the noise from the signal. There is too much at stake. Hence research is muzzled and has to listen to its master’s voice and the agenda and objectives of the organization. No objective can truly be based upon clear socio-political foundations. There will always be some element of bias.

US has led the world in research through its great educational institutions. Most of fundamental research has been funded by industry but generally with no strings attached. Hence as per Robert Solow of MIT, 90% of the growth of USA during the 100 years ending 1970 can be attributed to R&D.

Hence need for more fundamental research. Companies are setting aside about 1% of profits for research. There is a long and winding road to a world which pays feed to true research. Till then we have to sift the grains from the chaff. True fundamental universal research is our goal.  Some people like Bill Gates, etc are truly funding research will help the poorest of the poor with toilets, drinking water, viable shelter, food, etc. We need more boundary less research helping the have-nots. 

Sale Sale all the time…

The past decade or more has been witnessing round the year discount sales all over the world. About three decades ago there used to be definite period for sales which used to precede major festivals like Diwali, Dussera, Christmas, etc in India. Gradually the number of festivals have increased to the point where we have sales with high discounts right round the year like Bill Haley’s Rock round the Clock.

The bedrock of capitalism is free markets and competition. Generally it starts with few early companies reaping supernormal profits. Seeing this there is a herd instinct, and like lemmings, there is a stampede of entrepreneurs and companies to get in quickly in order to appropriate part of the supernormal profits as long as the going is good. The banks and authorities who permit these companies to enter these apparent El Dorado  commercial areas are oblivious to the reality that there is an optimum supply demand band which can be supported at any period of time.

So when through indiscriminate growth of production units catering to the same market place, there is in due course a surfeit of supply resulting in lowering of prices, fall in quality, This excess supply position is also the result of hyper competition, so called innovation of products which in reality are mostly incremental improvements, spread of mall culture, mass consumerism driven by TV ads and keeping up with joneses, hyper capacity, low effective demand, economies in recession, ageing population, highly leveraged consumerism based on liberal proliferation of credit cards and retail loans.

Some of the other fundamental reasons are the bursting of the property bubble which dissipated the feel good notional wealth factor which had led to wanton consumerism. In certain other economies like China, the State subsidises industry which helps in selling at lower prices and gaining new markets. But this debilitates the economy over time as debt to GDP rises to unsustainable levels.

Basically humans have become shallow and are always looking for something to excite them. So retail therapy has become a way of life among all classes of society. So people are caught in a perpetual cleft and disequilibrium between wanting to satiate their materialistic desires all the time and having the necessary means for fulfilling their carnal desires.  

Most companies who find themselves trapped with excess old stocks and discover that the only way to avoid a massive loss would be to sell as much at discounted prices. This way the companies are able to cover their fixed costs  for some time and hence keep their heads over the waters. Finally they have sell out to their competitors or declare bankruptcy.

These events in the real sectors of the economy have a domino effect on the financial system. The later has to carry some of the bad loans on their balance sheet for years.  As it is the financial system is over leveraged. So when substantial portions of loan portfolio become hard, the failure of the financial system is even greater.

We are really living in incredible times where individuals, companies and countries are all over leveraged with high debt ratios and as a result everywhere discount sales have become the normal way of life. This raises one fundamental question: in the system like this is there any true invariant measure of value. What is the intrinsic value of a set of goods? Is it their cost prices, fair market prices or the discounted price at which it’s being sold mostly? At the same time the stock markets and currency markets are always in a state of perpetual gyrations. Gold was earlier the standard measure of value. Then dollar took over in 1972. With the mounting fiscal deficit in US, the dollar is no longer a strong currency. We are living in indeed troubled economic crises times, an age of uncertainty and flux. China is flexing its muscles to step as the world’s reserve currency with its Yuan and its large holdings of US treasury bonds.

It is the best of times and the worst of limes. We are indeed at an inflection point of international history. 

Faustian Cyber Choices...

Today we have almost infinite and ultimate information and knowledge virtually at the fingertips of all. This knowledge is compounding exponentially. Today about 20 to 25% of the world have access to smartphones. Around 35 to 40% have TV access. Knowledge Nirvana is just a keyboard stroke away. Yes indeed it is the great and true democratisation of knowledge. Google is the God of knowledge, whom most of the digerati pay homage to few times a day through multi devices. The net and Google are the gateway to the rapidly expanding / exploding cosmos of knowledge.

Earlier knowledge was the preserve of a few. Only the privileged had access to knowledge which was found between covers to books. Books too were printed manually hence highly limited. Only those who could afford these rare limited editions could access knowledge. In a way Gutenberg changed all this with the printing press which was the first wave of multiplying depositories of knowledge.

This wealth of knowledge which comes virtually free has on the flipside an infinite cost which humanity has to bear. Indeed it’s the Faustian choice where Dr Faustus trades his soul for knowledge and power. Mankind by inventing this Frankenstein has tread into hitherto unchartered cyberspace and hurtling towards the age of singularity which Dr Kurzweil talks of. Even children for the past five years have taken to these wifi gadgets which with their alluring touch screens ensnare them to the infinite reaches of labyrinth of the World Wide Web. These kids are developing ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). This is not only restricted to kids, even adults are suffering from narrowing attention spans. Information overload is crippling sanity and mindfulness.

Man is getting closer to robots which these mass weapons of instant knowledge. Some people have started spending most of their waking hours on the net. This addiction is taking serious proportions. There are dark unregulated pools in the net where lot of cybercrime is taking place. Sex too is a major attraction for many on the digital highway. Movie Her has been inspired by these concepts. Majority of people in developed economies live single. Hence need for digital companions and lives to escape from loneliness.

This is indeed dehumanizing mankind. The scifi movies we see are a reality which bearing upon us fast. There is no turning back. The digital and surreal cyber future is now. 

Mounting global crisis - toys of doom...

Written on 24th February, 2013

New Grammar of Living Model is principally focused around the triad: 1. Social 2. Economics 3. Climate All the symptoms of the mounting global crisis may be categorised under the above three heads. All of excesses which are responsible for present convoluted multi crises which are plaguing the entire globe which are deteriorating both in terms of increasing complexity, frequencies and amplitude. Some details of the root causes have been outlined under Grammar of Life 1 & 2 earlier in in a previous blog in blogspot during June 2010. Since then the magnitude of the problems have perhaps compounded at an alarming rate. Everyone is bent on trying to at best solve the problems by tackling the immediate causes which are not the root causes which are often holistic and integrated in nature. We must not loose any more time in selflessly working towards integrated holistic solutions many of which will at 180 degrees to all that human civilisation has been aspiring for during the past several centuries. All of our standards and aspiration levels have been based upon non satvic values. Tamasik value systems are the order of the day in each and every sphere. Really do not know how the human race can really wean itself away from all it's tamasik desires which have been amply fueled, magnified and satisfied by the Frankensteinian developments of technology. Now it will be well nigh impossible the human race to give up these toys of doom. Each of them has negative connotations for the traid social, economics and climate. We are verily trapped in a complex labyrinthine mesh of our making. Is there no way out of this quagmire. Maybe only in annihilation of all that we know, admire and aspire for now and morphing towards a phoenix which can only rise from the ashes of the past.

Climate threat....

Written on 17th January 2013

A draft version of the 2013 National Climate Assessment is in the headlines this week. According to the report, the effects of climate change are becoming alarmingly visible throughout America and the rest of the world.

The report reads less like a government assessment and more like the Old Testament. Accounts of hurricanes, droughts, floods, impending famines, and natural disasters of every kind are listed in the report, and all of these occurrences have been linked directly to climate change. It is the mature stage of the anthropocene age.

Extracts from summary of the report:

Many aspects of the global climate are changing rapidly, and the primary drivers of that change are human in origin. Evidence for climate change abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans (Kennedy et al. 2010). This evidence has been painstakingly compiled by scientists and engineers from around the world using satellites, weather balloons, thermometers at surface stations, and many other types of observing systems that monitor the Earth's climate system.

The sum total of this evidence tells an unambiguous story: the planet is warming. Temperatures at the surface, in the troposphere (the active weather layer extending up to about 8 to 12 miles above the ground), and in the oceans have all increased over recent decades.

The report is unequivocal about both the causes of climate change and the impacts. As evidenced in the excerpt above, this information was compiled by experts from all over the scientific community, using every possible instrument to be as accurate as possible.

Reuters highlights a few of the more dire consequences of climate change listed in the report:

Threats to human health from increased extreme weather events, wildfires and air pollution, as well as diseases spread by insects and through food and water;

Less reliable water supply, and the potential for water rights to become a hot-button legal issue;

More vulnerable infrastructure due to sea-level rise, bigger storm surges, heavy downpours and extreme heat;

Warmer and more acidic oceans.

An interesting point about the report, a point that was put forward recently by Chris Mooney for Mother Jones, is that it finally puts climate change in terms that the average, unconcerned American citizen can understand: It points out how individuals will be affected in their "own backyards."

This is something that was missing from previous climate assessments, as Mooney points out:

The good news is that the process involves scientists traveling around the country and getting people's reactions to this series of alarming predictions - which makes the final assessment more likely to gain traction. Indeed, the development of the draft report coincides with the launch of "NCANet," a "network of networks" to get everyone from civil engineers to zoo to aquarium managers involved. So far, 60 organizations have signed on...

This may be the real genius of such an approach - and the thing that really terrifies the deniers. If you go into communities and get people thinking about what they will have to do to prepare for climate change, there's a good chance they will conclude that they can't simply "get ready." Preparedness and adaptation may sound good in theory, but are they really plausible when we're talking about turning planetary knobs far past the settings that have endured for most of recent human civilization?

Despite the dire situation that the report describes, there could still be reason for optimism. If the research process has the public talking about the climate change links to the extreme weather they're experiencing, it could open the doors for an honest, open discussion in Washington about addressing climate change impacts.

But that will require the American public to demand action from elected officials, and to remain vigilant about the matter regardless of the view out their window at any given moment.

Conditioning: its insane norms

Centuries of deep conditioning have left indelible scars upon human kind. Generally there is a herd instinct where most of us make choices based upon the predominant conditioning patterns either imposed on us from childhood by parents, surrounding society or hard coded genetic or biological conditioning.

There is a need to analyse the anatomy of the adverse conditioning cycles across the spectrum which have detrimental impact upon both societies and economies which in turn accelerates climate and environmental degradation.

The dualistic nature of conditioning which  forces individuals and societies to choose the more deeply ingrained positions which blindly bereft of any logic, people have been doing so because that is the expected choice they are supposed to take.

Some of the popular blind conditioning stances societies choose to adopt en masse  leading to hugely negative outcomes are:

Colour prejudice or racial discrimination; rich poor divide; blind pursuit of money at any cost and trampling upon fellow human beings in the process;

Rampant corruption mainly financial, legal, political; all businesses and corporations wanting to get bigger and declare more profits hook or by crook ushering in hypercompetion aided and abetted by unfettered principles of free markets, mass consumerism, burgeoning defence budgets;

Love for power and pandering to the whims of king size egos;

Class exploitation where the ruling classes have all the privileges and laws in their favour and 80% of the population forever condemned to their deprived existences;

Rich colluding in reducing taxes for rich so over time so their wealth multiplies at higher rates than the salaried and working classes where often in real terms the net assets of the non rich classes shrink over time;

Possessing bigger homes, cars, etc packed with energy intensive gadgets which are hurtling our planet closer to its doom;

Pleasure seeking hedonistic lifestyles where the senses and palate dictate all living, expenditure, eating, sex patterns and levels, with the modern media like TV and Internet spreading the message among both the haves and have nots (a la medium is the message) forcing all to live a perpetual state of orgasm;

Good life is the sole objective of everyone with all manner of comfort leading to heavy urbanisation, concrete jungles, alienation, urban chaos, energy dependent, meaningless existences;

Best syndrome where all right from school to working life, corporations want to top the list with winner takes all attitudes;

The norms of society have long become insane as postulated by RD Laing, those not able to cope with this conditioning are labeled as insane.

There is an urgent need to decondition and wean ourselves from this insane race which is propelling the human race and earth to oblivion.